Clinton Declares War On Smoking By Children

Fda Given Powers To Restrict Tobacco

August 24, 1996|By Frank James, Washington Bureau.

WASHINGTON — In a move marking a seismic shift in the U.S. government's war on tobacco, President Clinton on Friday announced new rules allowing the Food and Drug Administration for the first time to regulate tobacco in an effort to stop underage smoking.

The regulations, which Clinton endorsed in a White House Rose Garden ceremony, would restrict tobacco advertising and sales practices that the administration and many health experts believe encourage children to smoke.

"Today, we are taking direct action to protect our children from tobacco and especially the advertising that hooks children on a product," said Clinton, flanked by children in red T-shirts reading "Tobacco-Free Kids."

The decision, which has major social, political and economic implications, cleared the way for the regulation of tobacco by accepting the FDA's premise that tobacco's most controversial ingredient--nicotine--is an addictive drug the agency should oversee.

The rules would limit and tone down flashy print advertising, including billboards, and would require proof of age to buy cigarettes. They would also restrict the placement of vending machines to locations where minors are unlikely to have access and would ban the sale of single cigarettes.

But the fate of the rules remains uncertain. The advertising industry is contesting the regulations in federal court, and even senior administration officials expect challenges from tobacco interests to reach the Supreme Court.

Even so, administration officials could barely contain their joy Friday, ranking the regulation among the great public-health victories of the 20th Century, like the conquest of polio.

"With this historic action we are taking today, Joe Camel and the Marlboro Man will be out of our children's reach forever," said Clinton, who was accompanied by Vice President Al Gore, Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala and FDA Commissioner David Kessler.

Friday's announcement was the latest event in a week marked by a flurry of White House activity leading into next week's Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Earlier in the week, Clinton signed bills raising the minimum wage, expanding health-care coverage and ending the federal guarantee of aid to poor children.

In an election year in which the president's opponents are accusing him of a lack of character and conviction, the speakers at Friday's event took pains to portray Clinton's actions as courageous.

Linda Crawford, widow of a former tobacco lobbyist who died of lung cancer in the past year, introduced the president by saying: "I can't tell you how proud my husband would've been today of this president's leadership and character. . . . Never before in history has a president had the courage and leadership to stand up, speak out and to act to protect our children."

How much of a political risk Clinton was taking is debatable. The White House's polls show many Americans, especially women, favor actions to make it more difficult for children to smoke.

No doubt aware of such attitudes, Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole, attending a black journalists' convention in Nashville, avoided public comment on the Clinton initiative. Dole caused a controversy earlier this year when he questioned whether nicotine was addictive.

But Clinton's move angered many in the tobacco industry as well as farmers and others in Southern tobacco-growing states whose livelihoods depend on the crop.

Philip Morris Cos., saying only Congress has the authority to give the FDA regulatory power over tobacco, called the move a "specious and arbitrary interpretation of federal law."

And before the White House ceremony, a group named the Freedom to Advertise Coalition vowed to oppose the FDA regulations as violating 1st Amendment rights to free speech.

"Today, the products facing government censorship are cigarettes and smokeless tobacco," said Hal Shoup, executive vice president of the American Association of Advertising Agencies. "But if these proposed rules were allowed to stand, it is obvious that a dangerous precedent would be established for the advertising of countless other legal products that do not find full favor with government."

Tobacco companies were also gearing up to fight the regulations. Dr. Lonnie Bristow, president of the American Medical Association, expects the challenges could erode the FDA role unless Congress acts.

"Surveys show 80 percent of the public want FDA authority over the tobacco industry in order to protect children, not smokers but children," he said. "If Congress gets that message loud and clear from the public, they can write laws which will settle this matter and it won't matter what the tobacco industry says."

Advertisers said they could lose more than $1 billion of the $6 billion spent on marketing and promoting cigarettes annually because the new rules would make print advertising so unattractive and ineffective that cigarette makers would drop ads instead of paying for the bland ones the regulations allowed.